Along the Way
by ariabellewrites
Summary: Somewhere along the way she had stopped calling him 'Mr. Queen' and had started calling him Oliver.


She called him Mr. Queen.

From the moment he walked into her measly excuse for an office with his bullet holed laptop, she had called him Mr. Queen.

Because truly that was all he was to Felicity, he was her boss, he signed her paychecks, though not personally, and he was the reason she had a roof over her head, he was the reason she got to live the way she lived, and that was really all there was to it.

So, so what if there was something really attractive about how mysterious he was? And so what if there was something incredibly likeable about how terrible of a liar he was? And so what if she had the primal urge to have him push her against her desk and kiss her hard.

So freaking what?

And then he started coming by more and more, with his laptops with spilt coffee, arrow tracking, syringes of energy drinks, and scavenger hunts on military flash drives.

And despite the fact that he became infinitely more attractive by the day, and slightly less of a stranger, she called him Mr. Queen.

Because that was all he was, he was just her boss who had realized that she was good at her job, and considering he was signing her paycheck, he was taking advantage of that.

But then he was in the backseat of her car, with a green hood on his head, a gaping hole in his shoulder, and he was bleeding all over her seats. And then she had called him Oliver, it was a mistake, a slip of the tongue, something she had a tendency of doing, but then he had become Mr. Queen again.

Even when she ran down into the foundry, even when Dig pointed his gun at her, and even when his heart stopped beating, he was still Mr. Queen.

Despite the fact that something had tectonically shifted in, well whatever it was they were doing here, he was still just Mr. Queen, except now he was Mr. Queen with a massive secret she felt obligated to keep. She reasoned with herself by telling herself that the only reason she had updated his computers, the only reason she had agreed to keep his secret, was because she worked for him.

It had absolutely nothing to do with her concern for his safety.

And she justified helping him do whatever it was that he did as the vigilante by saying it was for Walter Steele.

Again, it had absolutely nothing to with the fact that he was less likely to die if there was another person looking out for him.

She wasn't concerned for his safety, not at all.

And then somewhere along the way, something had changed. Felicity wasn't sure when or how, but something had just changed. It happened quickly, and unintentionally, and she wasn't even all too sure when she had first started doing it, but somewhere along the way, he wasn't Mr. Queen anymore.

He just wasn't.

Somewhere along the way, without her realizing it, he had become her friend albeit a rather closed off friend who was prone to excessive violence and had rather odd needs, but a friend nonetheless.

And so she called him Oliver.

Felicity didn't even realize she was doing it, till she did. Till for some reason she realized that she really loved the way his name, his first name, sounded rolling off her tongue.

Appreciated, not loved, she appreciated it.

And then he nearly died a couple times, and she nearly died a couple times, and he got kidnapped a few times, and she got kidnapped a few times. And one thing led to another and eventually through many near death experiences they learned things about each other that actually held substance.

And suddenly, despite the lack of words that passed between the pair, and despite the fact that most of those words involved things like 'crime' and 'death' and 'murder' and 'Glades' and 'Mirakuru,' somewhere along the way, they had learned to read each other.

His body language became her first language, and in turn her babbling became his easiest code to decipher.

They had learned to talk without actually talking.

They barely knew a thing about each other, Felicity didn't know his birthday, or his favorite color, or if he liked to go bowling, she just knew that somehow she had become his best friend, and he hers.

Not that either had many friends to begin with.

And so she called him her best friend, though she kept that particular piece of information to herself.

And then Sara Lance had shown up in all her assassin beauty, and Felicity wasn't sure if she was even needed anymore.

It was like all those hours of working together had gone up into flames, and Sara could do everything she could do, except she could do it better.

So she stopped reading Oliver's body language, and he stopped listening to her babbling, and she didn't realize till she was sitting on a medical gurney, a bullet hole in her shoulder, and Oliver's shirt draped across her back, that she was the one who had pushed him away.

And so she told him so, though she told him again in her own way, in their way, because apparently they had their own language now.

And she called herself 'his girl.'

And then things changed even more. Somewhere between Roy, and Thea, and Isabel Rochev, and Malcom Merlyn, and Deathstroke, and Floyd Lawton, and every other bad and good thing that had happened, they had managed to overcome it.

But doing so hadn't been without its challenges, they had screamed at each other, because really who else did they have to scream at, and they blamed each other, because again who else did they really have to blame besides each other, and they found themselves having to confront their own emotions and demons in ways they had never had to do before.

Suddenly, it was like they were realizing for the first time that they weren't just responsible for themselves anymore, somewhere along the way, they had chosen to be responsible for each other.

And so she called him her boyfriend.

Sure it was a loose term to describe the long nights of not speaking while tangled up into each other, and the silent gazes that held so many more words then either of them knew, and the passion with which he had pinned her up against her new EA desk and kissed her till she was breathless.

But it was a term, and it was there, and it made Felicity smile like an idiot every time she said it.

And suddenly she wasn't staring longingly from behind her computers as he sparred and worked out, his shirt not anywhere near, now she stared at him with open interest as she anticipated how he would use those muscles in their bed that night.

And that was the other thing. Somewhere along the way, he had stopped going home altogether, he had stopped sleeping in the foundry, and her bed had become their bed. Her crappy shoebox of an apartment, had become their crappy shoebox of an apartment.

And then there was a credit card, a shiny black Amex that had arrived in the mail one day, her name printed in clear block style letters 'Felicity Smoak.' She knew the account number well, and more importantly she knew the person who had had the card made well.

So she resisted the urge to give Oliver a speech about how she was a perfectly capable independent woman, and swiped her shiny new credit card every time she went to the grocery store and Big Belly Burger. He ate the most, he might as well pay for the food.

Then somehow, before she even realized it had happened, she didn't have a single credit card that wasn't a shiny black, and her bank account was nonexistent, instead she had a shared bank account, she hadn't even realized that her name had been on Oliver Queen's account till she had gotten a phone call saying that an excessive amount of the account had been spent, and she needed to confirm that no one was committing fraud.

As it was the transaction was on a bundle of arrows, a transaction she was quick to erase from any and all databases.

And then she called him her fiancée.

She wasn't sure quite when it had happened, but somewhere along the way, they had moved out of their shoebox apartment, and into a shoebox of a home. Felicity had managed to rise victorious in the particular fight about how they didn't need a house that was big enough to house a herd of elephants.

And then she called him her husband.

And then he nearly died a few times more, and then she nearly died a few times more, and he was kidnapped a few more times, and again she was kidnapped a few more times. And they realized that they had things to discuss.

They had gotten this far, purely on whims, they had let things happen as they happened, there was no thought put into anything, but the true fact of the matter was that they were truly a family now. He was hers, and she was his, for as long as they shall live.

But more than that, one day, their family wouldn't just be the two of them, there would be little blonde haired, blue eyed babies running around, and they couldn't go on living like they had been.

They had to have a plan, they had to think about the future.

And because neither of them were particularly interested in that conversation, it had turned once again, into something that just happened. They had come to the conclusion, that planning just didn't work for them. When they planned, they worried, and when they worried, they fought, and when they fought, everything went to hell.

So one day Oliver came home with a 'last will and testament' one with his name on it, another with hers. She didn't bother looking over anything, not his, and not even hers, she simply signed her name, where it needed to be done.

That was something she never thought too much into, when her husband asked her to sign something she did so, no questions asked, no nothing, he asked, and she got the job done.

After all, that was how it had always been between them.

And that was how she had found herself the owner and CEO of Queen Consolidated.

Somewhere along the way, Oliver had decided he didn't want to run the company, and had the brilliant notion that Felicity was the person for the job, after all that was what the family had always wanted for the company, to keep it in the company.

And really she was the only option.

Moira and Walter had long since retired, Oliver – well to be blunt – he was shit at the gig, and as for Thea, well Thea had woken up one day as the sole heir to Merlyn Global, and she had taken the business world by storm when she had expanded the company with an opening of a chain of 'Verdant' clubs.

Thea Queen had taken her throne, just not the one anyone had expected her too.

So it seemed that Felicity Queen, would have to take her throne as well.

And now when she walked down the hallways of Queen Consolidated, nobody ID'd her, nobody whispered about how she had slept the way to her top, and nobody doubted her ability to run a company despite the fact that was just a girl with a master in IT from MIT.

Because no longer was she Oliver Queen's wife, no now, Oliver Queen was Felicity Queen's husband.

Felicity looked up at the slight knock on the glass door.

"Your EA sucks," Oliver grinned as he shut the door behind him.

Felicity briefly glanced at the rather mousy girl that was currently scribbling something onto a post it note, "Well she does bring me coffee, we here at Queen Consolidated pride ourselves on the quality of our coffee."

"I wouldn't know," He said, "I had this EA, a while ago, she talked way too much, she was kind of rude, extremely bossy, never got me more than a single cup of coffee."

Felicity grinned a mischievous grin, before she pushed back her chair, and stood up, smoothing out her dress.

"Sit."

She crossed the room quickly as Oliver took a seat behind the desk, in her chair, his old chair, and then exited the room.

"Hannah?"

"Yes, Mrs. Queen?"

"You can have the rest of the day off."

Hannah nodded, she knew better than to ask questions, mostly because the answers made Felicity start rambling, and that really just wasted a lot of time.

She waited until Hannah was off the floor, before locking the door, and walking back towards the office, untucking her shirt as she did so.

Felicity knocked on the door quietly before pushing it open.

"Well hello." Oliver smiled slowly as his eyes raked up and down her body as her fingers began unbutton the blue shirt – that she had stolen from Oliver's closet – with practiced skill.

"Your three-thirty is here, Mr. Queen."


End file.
